Leading UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the benefits of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
